Brendan O'Neill Interview

This is an interview I did in January 2007, my first year writing for the St. John's College Moon in Santa Fe. Since the Moon has no website I just pasted the whole thing here:

Introducing…

Brendan O’Niell is the new Athletic and Outdoor Programs Coordinator. Sue Lowley formerly held that position but headed out to the East Coast to Harrisonburg Virginia in mid-January to teach outdoorsmanship at James Madison University.
Brendan is a sturdy 5’9” with dark hair, dark eyes and a big, easy smile. I spent some time with Brendan on the Search and Rescue Winter Skills/Snowshoe Hike and the Wolf Creek Ski Trip. Although Brendan can be serious—stern even—he is quick to joke and has an almost ever-present sense of humor.
Brendan was born in Los Angeles, but moved to San Francisco two weeks later. He attended a private college-prep trade school where he spent long days learning welding and plumbing, as well as the usual math and science, “It was pretty intense,” He recalls.
In San Francisco he was an urban youth and he didn’t spend a lot of time in the outdoors until he was eighteen, when he decided to camp in Yosemite with some friends.

JS: How did that first trip go?

BO: I think the first trip all we had were sleeping bags. We were sleeping on the ground. We didn’t know much about camping and food supplies. A bear stole all our food! But we were troopers and went back. I think we went back for about the next five years in a row. Each year we got acquainted with a new piece of gear and really kind of learned the hard way (laughs).

You’re a Johnny. How did you end up at St, John’s?

Well when I got out of high school I always knew that I wanted to study some type of humanities. I went to San Francisco State for a year-and-a-half and I ran into my old high school French teacher and I was complaining—you know—that I couldn’t find the exact kind of humanities program I was looking for, and so I sat down and pretty much described the St. John’s College program to her without knowing that St. John’s College existed. I said, ‘I want to start looking at the beginning of western civilization and move all the way through the 20th century.’ She opened up her top drawer and said, ‘I think I know the school for you, they were just visiting and they held something called a seminar…’ So that’s what led me to St. Johns and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Did you ever do the Annapolis thing?

Nah. I’m not an East Coaster. I was used to the Santa Fe thing. You need some quiet time? Just step off campus, hike up Atalaya. Even the classroom style was different back then.

What about after graduation, how did you become a professional outdoorsman?

After I finished up at St. John’s I went back and did carpentry work because I was trained as a carpenter and professional house painter after high school. When I was going to St. John’s, for side work, I would do a lot of carpentry. So the next couple of years after I finished up I was just doing carpentry work in town and was really thinking seriously about moving back to San Francisco and that was when the college offered me the job as Assistant Director of Student Activities.

So it was just the director, and myself and at that particular time we took care of everything: concerts, lectures, dances, athletics and outdoor stuff.

My boss at the time was telling me, ‘You’re going to have to learn how to raft.’ I was like, ‘Oh shucks, darn,’ (laughs). So we kind of went through the school of hard knocks when it comes to rafting, you know, he had some buddies who had a raft that taught me and then he went down the Grand Canyon and saw that Canyon Rio, which is an outfitter company out in Flagstaff, was offering a guide school. He said, ‘Hey we should do this guide school,’ and that’s where I got trained as a professional raft guide. I started to work for them as well as continuing to work at the college. So that was kind of my first foray into professional raft guiding.

The other outdoor stuff I learned kind of on the job was—I joined Search and Rescue and spent four years on the team—so, you know, we got all the search and rescue aspects down, but we also got just the simple ‘leave no trace’ backpacking do’s and don’ts.

I kept finding myself going back to the Canyon-lands area, just for fun, or with students, that kind of thing, and that’s how it all sort of came about. Then I worked as the Assistant Activities Director for five years, from 1995 – 2000.

So you left and now you’re back?

Yup, I left St. John’s in 2002 and decided—you know, I was single, didn’t really have any ties so I got trained as a ski instructor and worked at Ski Santa Fe for three seasons and then I would raft in the spring summer and fall. After you kind of get good at your craft and you start knocking on other people’s doors and I must have worked for, I don’t know, ten companies over the last four years either doing backpacking, experiential education, or boating/rafting stuff. Canyon Rio had me work with my two teachers to learn how to teach white-water rafting so I’ve taught about four courses for them.

St. John’s College contacted me about a year ago to see if I could help them get their whole rafting stuff back together. It was actually Patrick Chandler that called me. I did their spring break trip last year and then they sent Sue and C.J. and three students to the Canyon Rio Guide School which I taught with three other instructors and we just kind of followed it up with the long weekend raft trip. That’s when Sue—a little bit after that trip—let me know she was thinking about leaving and was wondering what I was doing this winter. I had to weigh the options and decided to come back.

So it seems like you found your career through the school. Is that right?

Yeah, I didn’t really get exposed to the outdoors until I started doing stuff with Student Activities. The first trip where I was exposed to the Southwest we went up to Moab over long weekend and checked out arches, hung out in Moab, you know. I fell in love with it.

After that was the beginning of the rafting program, so the first time I went boating was with St. John’s College. We went on the Chama, went on the Rio Grande, went down the San Juan. That was kind of my first real introduction to it all.

I see you’ve got quite a collection of badges there on the wall.

Oh yeah. There’s the medical certifications, swift-water rafting certifications then the search and rescue, stuff like that. In ’97 I became an EMT, I got my Wilderness EMT license, and then dropped down to Wilderness First Responder. At that time there was a lot of paperwork involved to retain your wilderness EMT. Wilderness First responder crossed state lines. If you had the Wilderness First Responder then you were pretty much good to go for any company you were working for.

I did a Swift-Water First Responder course, good stuff to know. You know, people do fall in the water, you’ve got know how to rescue them and whatnot.

I’ve done my re-certifications through the big three: Wilderness Medical Associates, Wilderness Medical Institute and SOLO (Stonehearth Outdoor Learning Opportunities). Getting the PACE certification through New Mexico Search and Rescue. You get what you need for the industry standards. I’ve been at least a WFR (Wilderness First Responder) for the past ten years, CPR certified. To be a commercial boater in Utah you’ve got to have a Utah Guide License, so you keep that up. To work in Arizona you’ve got to have a food handler’s card, so you just keep all your certifications up to date, keep them going.

So how does it feel to have an office now?

In the winter my office would be at 10,000 feet, you know, in the summer my office would be on a river somewhere. You really couldn’t get a hold of me, which is just fine (laughs)….

But a desk means a different thing, right? This semester is just kind of going with what has been set up and assessing the situation. The students, in a sense, are the clienteles, and in a greater sense the college community is. You students happen to have a big say in what goes on here. I just have to assess what goes on this semester, see what works, see what doesn’t work, and use the summer to make whatever adjustments need to be made. Then we go onto the next semester, fall and spring. Later on this semester, probably after spring break, that’s when I’ll really be asking the college community, ‘What do you guys want?’ Then we’ll have the summer to really take a look at it and see if it’s feasible.

If you want to talk to Brendan about student activity ideas you can reach him at the SAC (x6149). The school has a ski trip to Wolf Creek scheduled for the weekend of February 24, as well as a rafting trip scheduled for spring break. Brendan will be leading both trips. (Josiah Stephens, St. John’s College Moon, January 2007)